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Lately, I've been captivated by a pair of eagles in Sydney, Vancouver Island who hatched a trio of eaglets earlier this month and are diligently feeding and protecting them as they grow.  Hancock Wildlife has placed birds-eye cameras by the nests high up in the trees allowing people to watch this pair, and another on Hornby Island, who just this morning hatched one of their two eggs.

To be able to watch nature in action is pretty amazing. One evening I saw an intruder that looked like another eagle try to snatch one of the eaglets. Another time the male eagle dropped off what looked like a dead rabbit, which startled the female when it tried to hop out of the nest. She killed it right before the prying eyes of thousands of enthusiastic bird-watchers. The eaglets,  hatched two and 4 days apart from one another sometimes fight to be the first to feed; the eldest pecking at the youngest until he/she plays dead just to stay out of its way. The chat rooms go crazy when these things happen. Some people lament nature's cruelty saying they can't watch. They give human qualities to the eagles, calling them mom, dad and babies.

One clever chatter coined the term "nestovers" when the eagles feed their young in the evening from the same fish or fowl they caught in the morning. They worry the parents aren't catching enough food, that the littlest one isn't eating enough to sustain him or that his nest-mates will peck him to death. They imagine they see blood in the nest, they wonder if the parents are experienced enough to shepherd their eaglets into the world. They say they'll cry their eyes out should anything happen to them and fret when one chatter informs the room that 40% of eaglets die while learning to fly.

The other night a fight broke out between the die-hard nature-watchers and the ones who can't stomach the ups and the downs of natural life. Lots of caps were used. Finally the die-hards left the room and the others traded quips about how they were killjoys and why can't they just lighten up! Mostly the chat rooms are a friendly places where people catch each other up on the days events on the nest and eventually, during the long stretches when the eaglets are sleeping, talk to one another about their own lives, where they live, what they do for a living, their kids, grandkids, etc.

It all reminds me of the first summer I lived in Vancouver and joined a small but dedicated group of swan-watchers in Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon. Before then, I had never really been much of a nature lover, mostly because I had rarely been exposed. My family didn't have a cottage and I guess I was an urban, concrete-jungle kinda gal, thriving on the adrenaline a busy city provides. Vancouver's urban setting is against the backdrop of nature and it changed me. That and the summer trips I took through BC and Alberta where wildlife is much more abundant than say... downtown Toronto.

Me and the other swan-watchers initially gathered to witness the incubation and hatching of the cygnets, but over the couple of months of meeting at the nests, we soon began to know each other above and beyond the swans. Some I kept in touch with, some I only saw the next year at the nests. We were all very invested in the success of the eggs and the new little lives. How thrilling it was to watch them take their first swim, how fascinated we were at how it all happens by an instinct that we as humans learn all too often to second-guess in ourselves.

It's instructional and awe-inspiring.

Watching the eagles breed is a nice reminder of that part of the country and my fairly recent appreciation of nature.

My first summer back in Toronto, I wrote this post about my experience with the swans.

Back when I was swan-watching in Vancouver I wrote this story for a local paper.